The safe and effective performance of surgical procedures has always required that special precautions be taken to ensure the sterility of the operating environment. These precautions have traditionally focused on protecting the patient from infection because during surgery their natural protective barrier, their skin, is violated to enable the operation. However, in recent years there has been great concern about the risks surgical procedures pose to the physicians and nurses who perform them. The spread of highly contagious and potentially deadly viruses such as the HIV virus has made surgical procedures more and more dangerous. Thus, the concern with sterility in the surgical environment has taken on a new twist. Now the medical profession needs to protect both patients and medical personnel from infection during an operation.
This dual concern has resulted in more and more drastic precautions. For instance, entire operating rooms and all the surgical equipment they contain must now be extensively sterilized between every use. Further, it now costs $180 just to drape a patient in sterile sheets for an operation. Since time-consuming and expensive steps such as these must now be taken just to prepare an operating room for a single surgical procedure, it is plain that these increased precautions have contributed to rising health care costs and helped fuel the health care crisis this country faces.